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Learning Spaces

360-Acre Campus

A living lab of rolling fields, woods, and ponds, our 360-acre campus is perfect for hands-on science study—radio-tracking box turtles and cultivating a permaculture garden, for example. The changing seasons provide new inspiration and opportunities for artists and writers, too.

The campus also has top-notch athletics facilities—a picturesque cross country course, tennis courts, a swimming pool, and baseball, soccer, and football fields.

IDEA Centers

Two IDEA Centers combine high-tech with high academic expectations for creative, collaborative, self-directed learning. Inviting, multipurpose spaces offer digital tools alongside traditional reference sources. A mix of reading and study areas allows students to work comfortably in collaboration or on their own.

Media and Communications Center

Our Media and Communications Center features a fully equipped television and sound-recording studio and a spacious Mac lab for online publishing, digital design, and film classes. Within easy reach of Upper and Middle School students and faculty, it’s a great place to produce a television show or record music.

E-STEAM Hub

Used by all levels, the E-STEAM Hub is a vibrant makerspace, the perfect spot for emerging entrepreneurs and engineers to tinker, explore, create, craft, and innovate. Nearly 10,000 square feet, the Hub includes a vast robotics room with LEGO stations and competition fields, as well as workshops with 3D printers, sewing machines, a screen-printing machine, weaving loom, and more.

Lower School Playground

The Lower School playground, with its flowing creek (that recycles its water), sand and mud pits, hobbit holes, tree trunks, boulders, and native vegetation, is an extension of the classroom. It’s also proof of Principia’s commitment to sustainability and the incorporation of natural resources into the curriculum.

Performing Arts Center

Our new Performing Arts Center confirms the central role and vitality of the arts at Principia. This state-of-the-art space can accommodate individual practice sessions, band rehearsals, and noisy tap dancing all at once. In the midst of all the activity, students discover and demonstrate their talent and verve through our vibrant performing arts programs.

Black Box Theatre

This unique space, seating up to 100 people, is the heart and soul of our Upper School Theatre program. During the day, it serves as a classroom where students study technique and rehearse—and where visiting theatre professionals regularly hold master classes and critiquing sessions. During performance weekends, the Black Box hosts our popular Shakespeare in the Spring series, as well as numerous fall and spring performances that showcase plays written, directed, and/or performed by students

Art Studios

Our art studios are hives of multimedia creativity where students discover and develop their skills of observation, rendering, and 2D and 3D creativity. While making art, they also debate and discuss its meaning and relevance to 21st-century society.